As a vehicle provided with an electric motor serving as a propulsion generating source and an electric storage device, such as a battery, for storing the power supply energy of the electric motor, there has been known a vehicle disclosed in, for example, Patent Document 1. This vehicle is provided with a connection unit for connecting thereto an external power feeding device, which uses a home AC power supply or the like as an original power supply so as to allow the electric storage device to be charged from the external power feeding device connected to the connection unit.
As described in the aforesaid Patent Document 1, in this type of vehicle, when an external power feeding device is connected to a connection unit of the vehicle, a control unit of the vehicle (a control unit that controls the charging of an electric storage device) is started in response thereto. Then, the control unit controls a charger between the connection unit of the vehicle and the electric storage device to cause the external power feeding device to charge the electric storage device.
Herein, the external power feeding device may be disconnected from the connection unit of the vehicle by a user even while the electric storage device is in the middle of being charged. If the external power feeding device is removed from the connection unit of the vehicle in the middle of the charging of the electric storage device as described above, i.e., in a state wherein electricity is being supplied from the external power feeding device to the electric storage device, then an arc tends to occur at the connection unit. This in turn tends to cause deterioration of an energizing terminal of the connection unit of the vehicle or an energizing terminal of the connection unit of the external power feeding device. This leads to a likelihood of an increase in the contact resistances of the energizing terminals, generating heat at the connection units at the time of subsequent charging of the electric storage device thereafter.
Hence, according to the art disclosed in the aforesaid Patent Document 1, a detection signal related to the state of the connection of the external power feeding device to the connection unit of the vehicle is supplied to the control unit. Hence, if the detection signal received while the electric storage device is being charged is a signal indicating that an operation for disconnecting the external power feeding device has been carried out, then the control unit controls the charger to stop charging the electric storage device.